Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief
We get a great deal of pleasure in seeing companies that we admire and that we have pointed out (long before they become trendy and famous – if indeed you can be trendy and famous in this industry) win awards from others. Today we take a quick look at signagelive who won more awards than anyone in 2009.
Number 8 in our #DSTop10 in 2008 and number 6 in 2009 these guys have been winning awards left, right and centre recently…
- AV Awards Digital Signage manufacturer of the year award
- AV Futures Editors Award for ‘best digital signage solution’
- Retail Systems Awards 2009. Winner: Best use of in-store marketing technology in retail
And whilst Jason Cremins, their CEO wasn’t exactly in exalted company he was one of only two worthy ‘Industry execs to watch in 2010‘ as nominated (rather foolishly) by Digital Signage Today.
Signagelive is like all the products in our #DSTop10 a good product, simple to use, easy to setup. What we really like about signagelive though is that the company itself is very easy to deal with and do business with. We haven’t ever heard a bad word said about dealing with these guys and VARs seem to love ’em – judging at least by the number of VARs who have dropped other products to sign up with them (Kreatevee most recently).
In 2009 we saw from them; a new look and feel, syndicated content ingress to the player (Media RSS including support for UGC content, ScreenFeed and signchannel), a Virtual Player (supporting SMIL and Media RSS devices from over 120 manufacturers), Screen control (Power saving, RS232, Minicom DS Vision 3000), Self service licence management, Automated free trial process, White Label offering to resellers and OEMs and Integration of online help including comprehensive contextual searchable help, live chat, integrated support case portal and new getting started guide.
One of the things we really liked was Signagelive freedom – their mobile 3G proposition in conjunction with Westbase Technology (H3G and Sierra Wireless).
As opposed to many software vendors who claim to be SaaS, who claim to be in the Cloud, signagelive really are. They walk the talk rather well in fact and should be a poster boy for the SaaS industry – their back office systems (Salesforce <> signagelive <> Xero) means that their entire business is now hosted in the Cloud.
Signagelive didn’t get it right the first time they tried their hand in North America but weren’t frightened of trying again and key strategic wins such as the NFL Stadium projects with Ping HD in North America have proven they have what it takes to work far afield.
We believe that signagelive have seen business growth in all territories including North America, Scandinavia and Australasia.
signagelive however need to be careful. They need to figure out where they want to be and how far they can go. As one industry network CEO pointed out to us the week before last in Amsterdam “if you look too good, look too succeessful, then you can look unapproachable” – signagelive are on that upward hockey ramp and may need to level off at some point in order that someone can value them for what they really are.
#DSTop10 posts are kindly sponsored by Magenta Research
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